Indefinitely Scalable Computing = Artificial Life Engineering

David H. Ackley, Trent R. Small

Abstract (Excerpt)

The traditional CPU/RAM computer architecture is increasingly
unscalable, presenting a challenge for the industry—and is too fragile to be securable even at its current scale,
presenting a challenge for society as well. This paper argues
that new architectures and computational models, designed
around software-based artificial life, can offer radical
solutions to both problems. The challenge for the soft alife
research community is to harness the dynamics of life and
complexity in service of robust, scalable computations—and
in many ways, we can keep doing what we are doing, if we
use indefinitely scalable computational models to do so. This
paper reviews the argument for robustness in scalability, delivers
that challenge to the soft alife community, and summarizes
recent progress in architecture and program design for
indefinitely scalable computing via artificial life engineering.